Abhinavagupta

Abhinavagupta was a Kashmiri philosopher, aesthetician and theologian active around the year 1000, a central figure of Kashmir Shaiva thought. His commentaries on Bharata's Natyashastra and on Anandavardhana's theory of suggestion became the standard framework for Sanskrit aesthetics. He argued that rasa, aesthetic relish, is not an ordinary emotion but a non-ordinary, blissful mode of experience in which feeling is savoured free of personal attachment.

Key ideas

• Rasa is a distinctive aesthetic experience, not simply an emotion felt in everyday life.
• In tasting rasa the spectator relishes a generalised emotion, free of the ego's practical concerns.
• Aesthetic relish resembles, without being identical to, the bliss of spiritual realisation.
• Suggestion (dhvani) is the soul of poetry, and rasa is what it ultimately conveys.

Major works

• Abhinavabhāratī (commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra)
• Locana (commentary on Ānandavardhana's Dhvanyāloka)
• Tantrāloka

In the conversation

• Discussion Rasa and catharsis: is tasting an emotion the same as purging it? Kavya Menon · 4 replies
• Discussion Rasa and ordinary emotion: why can grief in a play be a kind of delight? Kavya Menon · 5 replies
• Reading group Reading group: Aristotle’s Poetics as a craft manual, with the Nāṭyaśāstra beside it Kavya Menon · 4 replies
• Question Is the Sanskrit sahṛdaya the same ideal critic as Hume’s “true judge”? Kavya Menon · 4 replies
• Reading group Reading group: the Nāṭyaśāstra’s chapters on rasa and bhāva Kavya Menon · 4 replies
• Reading group Reading group: how grief becomes rasa, from Lollaṭa to Abhinavagupta Meera Kulkarni · 5 replies
• Debate We enjoy tragic art because the grief belongs to no one in particular Arjun Iyer · 5 replies

In the Journal

• Journal Why does sad art feel good? What the rasa theorists worked out Meera Kulkarni · 0 replies